Tamasha Williamson, Chicago Artists' To Watch, December
Your ‘Signifier Series” has three main focus points: image, text and title. What is the significance of each?
It’s about the idea of what a visual image brings to mind in conjunction with what a snippet of language brings to mind, and what the viewer gets when they’re put together.
You don’t sign your work. Why?
Perhaps it’s the association of being finished with a project or piece. Sometimes I go back in and work them over and change them completely, so signing a piece signifies the end. The important thing is the visual dimension of the work, and I think signatures get in the way. Given that my “thing” is using language, putting my signature on it would be another element of language added to the understanding of the piece, and would get in the way.
You received your BFA from the University of Illinois, your MFA from LA design, and you studied in Florence. How do you think the Chicago art community compares?
The art community here is different, or at least in my experience. When I was a kid, my mother did ceramics and she participated in (Chicago) art fairs and had occasional shows. She came up in that Chicago State University crew, so usually the art fairs she participated in had a kids’ section and I would participate. Then I went to school and studied art in LA for many years and participated in that art community. What I found out about the Chicago art community is that it exists in several circles, plus there’s the School of Art Institute-type crowd. So there are different communities. I found it very difficult to infiltrate it at first, because people are very protective of their circles. But if you show up at enough events and submit work, you start moving forward.
In your work, there is a clear separation among graphic design, illustration and conceptual art. What are you trying to say in your art that you couldn’t say through illustration or graphic design?
With graphic design, you have a responsibility to a client. Their word is the last word and you are merely a tool. It’s similar in illustration. But in my art practice, I have the last word with what I present. What I make comes out as graphic design or propaganda, in which case it moves out of the art realm. It is interesting to me in terms of what an object brings to the plate. As an artist you are responsible for all those bits of information coming together. In graphic design, the most important thing is conveying information quickly. A piece needs to be eye-catching, to convey a message, and that message needs to be simple and grasped immediately. But art is about concepts and ideas. I’m hoping my art conveys a coherent meaning. I am hoping it starts a conversation or lingers in one’s mind.
What is the content you are trying to make linger in these images?
I’m a feminist, and I’m interested in political and cultural hierarchies, especially things that are accepted and thought of as everyday. Let’s take my piece “His Seminal Work.” The title for that piece is funny because of the importance men place upon ejaculation. Semen, the most important thing, the best thing you have done, what you will be known for forever – that’s your seminal work, your progeny. It’s about that sort of masculinity, the idea that everything masculine is most important. It’s about how cultures have observed the idea of men on top and women secondary.
And we are so accepting of this, it’s a part of our everyday lives. Women tend to assert power through sexuality. That’s how men fall to our feet, because of beauty. We have power beyond beauty but don’t take advantage of it because of how we are taught and brought up. Women are encouraged to focus their energy on being beautiful. Not on developing their brains, being smart, or getting the most you can. Though we are moving in a different direction, there is still a lingering effect of that being propagated in terms of importance.
All of that said, I am really interested in how hierarchies are formed and how we are complicit with them to the point that we don’t acknowledge them anymore. That’s basically what my work is about. It’s about pointing these things out – the way that femininity is often associated with weakness, and exposing those hierarchies. I wonder how and why this construct occurred. My goal is to prompt thought.
